[OLPC India] our school is ready

[Manusheel Gupta]

Dear Sameer,

Iam glad to learn about your interest in our educational project.

I'll soon post more about OLPC-India Foundation, and getting involved in it.
We are in the process of structuring the different interest groups, who wish
to be a part of our vision in India.

>Given that the Indian government has said no to the OLPC effort, I wonder
of there are ways to still pursue this. In a sense, I have access > to a
village, and I want to help.

First, it is a misconception that Indian Government as a whole, did'nt show
interest in our project. There were certain Ministers( especially one, whose
name I'll leave unmentioned), who became critical about our project, and its
vision. Second, as long as people are interested in our vision, which
is definitely true in case of India, finding ways is not a problem. Infact,
the ways have already been figured out, and we are making headway in the
right direction. Third, we have support from big corporations, and
Ministers in Indian Government too.
Finally, I see the target audience i.e. children, being greatly benefited
from implementing OLPC in India. I happen to visit Khairat School in Navi
Mumbai recently, where we have conducted our first pilot in India. It is a
rural school in every aspect, except children who lack opportunity, not
capability. I could see the difference in the approach children learn
learning, while interacting with the XOs( our low-cost, high-performance
laptops), and the big way in which our educational tool can help them to
make a better and a peaceful world, in which we all live and
interact amongst each other. World needs to be fulfiled, and not conquered
is the message we are trying to put across through every aspect of XO:
starting from open-source software to mesh-network scheme, which motivates
the idea of "sharing".

I wish if we kindly forget the one-time event of OLPC's rejection by certain
HRD Ministers in India that has unfortunately happened in the past.

Regards,
Manu


Manusheel Gupta
Technical Consultant/Advisor
One Laptop Per Child Inc.
http://laptop.org








On 10/15/07, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
>
> Joshua N Pritikin wrote:
> > "The formation of OLPC-India Foundation has been engineered, which
> > comprises of corporate partners, non-profit organizations, Education
> > Ministers at State Level, bureaucrats, and most importantly: interested
> > volunteers."
> >
> > "OLPC-India pilot project is going to start during the end week of this
> > month(September'07)!"
> >
> > My wife and I own a small school (200 kids) in Nashik, Maharashtra. We
> > are very eager to implement OLPC. How do we join the foundation? Can we
> > get involved in a pilot?
> > _______________________________________________
> > India mailing list
> > India at lists.laptop.org
> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india
> >
>
> I would like to know more about the foundation project as well. I have
> two specific interests:
>
> 1) My research interests are in the direction of sustainable information
> systems as a whole, and OLPC implementations are of great interest.
>
> 2) A part of my family comes from Bhagmalpur, a small village in
> northern India (Dist. Jaunpur, UP). This village has about 40 families.
> Our family started the local school (now managed by the state
> government). We have been pioneers in bringing education in some mode to
> the village. The village is on the electrical grid, but  may see about
> two hours worth of power in a 24 hour period. The Internet has not
> reached this village as yet. Long term, I would like to see this village
> benefit from projects such as OLPC. Given that the Indian government has
> said no to the OLPC effort, I wonder of there are ways to still pursue
> this. In a sense, I have access to a village, and I want to help.
>
> cheers,
> Sameer
>
> --
> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Information Systems
> San Francisco State University
> San Francisco CA 94132 USA
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
> _______________________________________________
> India mailing list
> India at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india
>
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